Project description:African-Americans with prostate cancer tend to have a more aggressive form of the disease, as compared to their Caucasian counterparts. Nevertheless, African-Americans tend to be underrepresented in most molecular profiling studies of prostate cancer. To investigate DNA copy number alterations (CNAs) in prostate cancer from a cohort of African-Americans, we profiled 20 tumors (each with paired normal) for 500,000 SNPs. Keywords: tumor-normal comparison
Project description:To investigate the effect of 1,25(OH)2D3 activation on chromatin accessabilty in prostate cell lines derived from European Americans and African Americans
Project description:Systemic arterial hypertension is an important cause of cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality. African Americans are disproportionately affected by hypertension, in fact the incidence, prevalence, and severity of hypertension is highest among African American (AA) women. Previous data suggests that differential gene expression influences individual susceptibility to selected diseases and we hypothesized that this phenomena may affect health disparities in hypertension. Transcriptional profiling of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from AA or white, normotensive or hypertensive females identified thousands of mRNAs differentially-expressed by race and/or hypertension. Predominant gene expression differences were observed in AA hypertensive females compared to AA normotensives or white hypertensives. Since microRNAs play important roles in regulating gene expression, we profiled global microRNA expression and observed differentially-expressed microRNAs by race and/or hypertension. We identified novel mRNA-microRNA pairs potentially involved in hypertension-related pathways and differently-expressed, including MCL1/miR-20a-5p, APOL3/miR-4763-5p, PLD1/miR-4717-3p, and PLD1/miR-4709-3p. We validated gene expression levels via RT-qPCR and microRNA target validation was performed in primary endothelial cells. Altogether, we identified significant gene expression differences between AA and white female hypertensives and pinpointed novel mRNA-microRNA pairs differentially-expressed by hypertension and race. These differences may contribute to the known disparities in hypertension and may be potential targets for intervention.
Project description:To investigate the effect of 1,25(OH)2D3 activation on VDR genomic binding in prostate cell lines derived from European Americans and African Americans
Project description:To investigate the effect of 1,25(OH)2D3 activation on small RNA expression in prostate cell lines derived from European Americans and African Americans
